Summary

Glossary

Various acronyms and terms are used in the Total Economy Database spreadsheets and documentation. Since there seems to be no unified place for these on the Conference Board website, we collect them here.

Versions

As of October 2017, there have been nine releases of the Total Economy Database. Each release of the database comes in the form of two or three spreadsheets (and sometimes release notes and supplementary data files). These are "Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity", "Growth Accounting and Total Factor Productivity", and "Regional Aggregates". The following spreadsheets are listed in the archive, available through the "Data" page, or available on the Internet Archive:[4][5][6]

Spreadsheet

Publication date/version

Years covered

Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity Country Details

January 2010

1950–2009

Growth Accounting and Total Factor Productivity Country Details

January 2010

1980–2008

Regional Aggregates

January 2010

1990–2010

Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity

January 2011

1950–2010

Growth Accounting and Total Factor Productivity

January 2011

1990–2009

Regional Aggregates

January 2011

1990–2011

Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity

January 2012

1950–2011

Growth Accounting and Total Factor Productivity

January 2012

1990–2011

Regional Aggregates

January 2012

1990–2012

Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity

January 2013

1950–2012

Growth Accounting and Total Factor Productivity

January 2013

1990–2012

Regional Aggregates

January 2013

1990–2013

Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity

January 2014

1950–2013

Growth Accounting and Total Factor Productivity

January 2014

1990–2013

Regional Aggregates

January 2014

1990–2014

Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity

May 2015

1950–2015

Growth Accounting and Total Factor Productivity

May 2015

1990–2014

Regional Aggregates

May 2015

1990–2015

Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity

September 2015

1950–2015

Growth Accounting and Total Factor Productivity

September 2015

1990–2014

Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity

May 2016

1950–2016

Regional Aggregates

May 2016

1990–2016

Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity

November 2016

1950–2016

Growth Accounting and Total Factor Productivity

November 2016

1995–2015

Regional Aggregates

November 2016

1990–2016

Output, Labor, and Labor Productivity

May 2017

1950–2017

Growth Accounting and Total Factor Productivity

May 2017

1990–2016

Regional Aggregates

May 2017

1990–2017

The Conference Board claims the Total Economy Database began in the early 1990s and ownership transferred to the Conference Board in 2007,[7] so there are likely older spreadsheets that are no longer available online.

Devec database

All versions of the Total Economy Database available on the Conference Board website as of October 2017 have been imported into the devec database.[8]

In the devec database, use name = 'Total Economy Database' to find releases of the Total Economy Database:

Data description

Data dimensions and metrics

The data presented in the Total Economy Database are a partial function where:

The inputs (the dimensions) are region (country or aggregate region) and year.

The metrics include:

Population

GDP

GDP per capita

Total annual hours worked

Year dimension

Each spreadsheet has a year range that it covers. The start year is 1950, 1980, or 1990 in most cases, and the end year is the publication year or 1–2 years prior to publication. Even if a year is covered in the spreadsheet, some values may be missing depending on the region and metric.

Region dimension

The region dimension includes most modern countries. For China, there are "official" and "alternative" versions. For regional aggregates spreadsheets, a "Country / Region" is given, usually with a broader region than just a country (e.g. "Latin America", "Middle East & North Africa", "Europe", "EU-15", "OECD").

Other information

At least one spreadsheet uses italics, but I forgot which one and for what meaning.

Data sources

Methods of estimation

People

The Total Economy Database section of the Conference Board website does not list the names of the people who work on the database, nor does it make any acknowledgments other than for the data sources it uses.

From the biography for Klaas de Vries: "De Vries is part of the productivity and growth research team and manages various database revisions and updates, such as the annual update of the Total Economy Database™, which covers indicators that measure the current and historical performance of labor and capital productivity for over 120 countries."[11]

Abdul A. Erumban is listed as a contact on the TED part of the Conference Board website.

The "Global Economy" experts listed on the Conference Board website are also possible.[12] Bart van Ark in particular has ties to the University of Groningen.

↑OECD Statistics Directorate. "OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms - EKS method Definition". Retrieved October 21, 2017. A multilateral method developed by O. Elteto, P. Koves and B. Szulc [Schultz] that computes the nth root of the product of all possible Fisher indexes between n countries. It has been used at the detailed heading level to obtain heading parities, and also at the GDP level. EKS has the properties of base-country invariance and transitivity.

↑"About the Total Economy Database". Retrieved October 21, 2017. TED was developed by the Groningen Growth and Development Centre (University of Groningen, The Netherlands) in the early 1990s, and starting in the late 1990s, it was produced in partnership with The Conference Board. As of 2007, the database was transferred from the University of Groningen to The Conference Board, which has maintained and extended the database since then.